Duckies invade the British Isles « Grassroots Science

Duckies invade the British Isles

Published 2007 June 28 Updates , birds , environmental change , maps 7 Comments

Milard Fillmore’s Bathtub has an update on our duckies
Hey, Britain! Duck! It’s another armada! –

http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/06/28/hey-britain-duck-its-another-armada/

Where is… duckie invasion –

http://ykalaska.wordpress.com/2006/07/24/where-is-duckie-invasion/

Where is… duckie invasion redux –

http://ykalaska.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/where-is-duckie-redux/

Add this to Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: duckie, Milard+Fillmores+Bathtub, gyre, Arctic+Ocean, Gulf+Stream

7 Responses to “Duckies invade the British Isles”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address

1 Ed Darrell 2007 June 29 at 12:31 am

Ha! I wondered where those maps would be! I couldn’t find them when I was writing the post yesterday. Thanks!

Reply
2 Pam 2007 June 29 at 7:28 am

You’re welcome. Every tub needs a rubber duckie.

Reply
3 Pam 2007 July 2 at 9:00 am

There’s another map at http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_03/duckGPX2706_468×280.jpg

The real ducky is different from the ones illustrated here and elsewhere; ours squeek but evidently the others don’t.

“And because the toys are made of durable plastic and are sealed watertight, they have been able to survive years adrift at the mercy of the elements.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=464768&in_page_id=1770

Reply
4 Pam 2007 July 2 at 9:08 am

The Bathtub has lots of references for people to follow up on.

The Ebbesmeyer site is working, just probably clobbered with interest. There, he talks about the “Great Garbage Patch”
http://beachcombersalert.org/RubberDuckies.html

Reply
5 Pam 2007 July 4 at 9:18 am

“`Twas brillig, and the slithy toys
Did subArctic gyre and gimble on the wave:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”
http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html

Reply
6 Pam 2007 August 19 at 5:12 pm

Plastic is everywhere on the seas NED ROZELL ALASKA SCIENCE Published: August 19, 2007

Twenty-eight years after scientists spilled hundreds of plastic discs on the ice of the Beaufort Sea to determine ocean currents, another one has come home to roost at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks…. In 1979, scientists scattered 1,500 of the seven-inch discs on the sea ice around Prudhoe Bay to see how oil spilled there might drift….

From 1956 to 1959, Canadian scientists stuffed messages into 19,000 12-ounce brown beer bottles and set them adrift in the Gulf of Alaska, with notes asking the finders to tell them where they picked up the bottles. The last published report of a message-in-a-bottle find was in 1972….

“The single biggest item we’ve found in the last five years is plastic water bottles,” Orbison said.

Plastic is all over the world’s oceans. A researcher in Hawaii in 2000 picked apart the regurgitated pellets of 144 albatrosses and found plastic in every single one. Sun breaks plastic down to a small extent, but the floating toys and other items [...]

Reply
7 mpb 2008 December 28 at 10:23 am

Greenland glacier duckies (from Science News, Sigma Xi)

Nasa Ducks Dive Under Greenland Ice

from BBC News Online

Ninety bathtub toys were hurled into a drainagehole on the Greenland ice in September – an experiment to see how melt waters find their way to the base of the ice sheet. It was hoped the ducks would flow along subglacial channels and eventually pop out into the sea. They may still, but nothing has been seen of them so far.

“We haven’t heard anything from them yet,” said Nasa’s Alberto Behar. “If somebody does find one, it will be a great breakthrough for us.” Dr. Behar is a robotics expert with the agency at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He has been studying the tubular crevasses that appear on the surface of the Greenland ice known as moulins.

These “plug holes” can drain vast lakes of melt water that settle on the top of the ice during summer months. Scientists would like to know how and to what extent this water can help lubricate the base of the ice sheet, moving it faster towards the ocean.

http://snipr.com/8zt2s

Reply

This site

Please let me know if links are broken or missing (The Doctor is IN page)

To read (and print) only one individual post, click on its title. This shows the comments, also. The comments contain additional or updated information. Search for "revised" to find updated info, too.

Readers may subscribe by E-mail or by a feed reader (see sidebar). Click to subscribe to the posts by RSS for posts

Click to subscribe by RSS for comments and updates (recommended if you subscribe to posts)

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer users may find the site doesn't look as nice as Firefox or Opera users, but the info is all here.

If people are interested in further developing topics (such as solid waste, environmental health, erosion and climate, cultural ecology and heritage, or alcohol control) just let me know.

Micro-thoughts are available here, Tumbld twits and newsclips

click logo for Grassroots Science projects. Join us

June 2007
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« May		Jul »
	1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Teachers of the Tundra

Ptarmigan hunting
Ive always considered myself to be more of a stream outdoorsman, but living in Alaska you are given so many opportunities to play in the field as well. I recently, last weekend, took up one such opportunity and borrowed the schools snow machine and joined Mr. Smith (6th grade teacher) on a x-tundra adventure to hunt some ptarmigan. Ptarmigan are kind of like […]
Katja and the powder bowl
The winds are finally blowing consistently out of the south, which means that the temperatures are slowly going to be warming up. This is already evident, because the snow is getting heavy and slushy. Some areas of tundra are completely exposed where the wind kept the snow from sticking.Here are some pics in rememberance of the winter playground that I deeme […]
The Melt Down
So its starting to really thaw and run big streams of water everywhere through town. My front yard is a total bog even after I created the levy you see here through the snow. It took two attempts to complete it and even a little from some of my former students. The water has been flowing steady for about a week now, and there is still tons of snow throughout […]
We're melting away
Alaska is a difficult place to live in for most of the year and during the winter especially, but the in between seasons are my least favorite times of the year. Fall and Spring. In the fall, the rains turn everything into mud, which gets tracked everywhere. On top of that, when it dries, it turns into dust, especially in carpeted areas. Our whole school […]
Fishing in the Fall
So last weekend, I made one last voyage up the Alakugaq to fill my freezer. I actually wasn't planning to keep any fish, but when I caught some good size fish, I changed my mind. I had decided to hike farther up river than I had ever been before. I also had dinner plans for 6 pm, so I knew that I couldn't spend too much time exploring. I rod […]

Grassroots Science